Posts Tagged ‘adventure’
Isabella L. Bird
“Everything suggests a beyond.”
– Isabella L. Bird
Born in England in 1831, Isabella L. Bird was outspoken from a young age. For health reasons, in 1854 a doctor suggested a sea voyage. This would lead to a life of travel, her adventures taking her to the U.S. (where she spent time in Colorado, riding horseback across the Rockies), Australia, India, Kurdistan, Turkey, Morocco and many more.
Bird wrote about her adventures in several books, likeA Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, and was a respected photographer and naturalist, exploring and documenting the world around her. In 1892, she became the first woman fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
Imagine being a female adventurer in her day – a time when women were expected to stay home, to stick to their routines. She upended all of those expectations, fueled by an interest in adventure and a desire to tackle new challenges. In Colorado, she became the first woman to climb Long’s Peak, nowadays one of the state’s most popular “fourteeners.”
It’s so easy to only focus on the minutiae of the world around us; our to do lists, our daily lives, our routines. But Isabella’s quote is a reminder that there is always more; a challenge to open our eyes, to look beyond, to think differently. The world is full of potential for discovery, whether it’s far away or in our own backyard. We simply have to open ourselves to it.
This papercut is a part of the Women’s Wisdom Project, a yearlong project focused on showcasing the wisdom of inspiring, insightful women by making 100 papercut portraits.
Adventure Journals
What inspires you to get out and adventure?
That was the driving question behind this collection of three Adventure Journals, a special, limited edition collaboration with my friends over at Wylder Goods. Inspired by the pursuit of adventure – whether it’s a bike ride, a cup of coffee brewed outside, or a night under the stars – these journals are there to accompany you and provide a home for your thoughts, musings and ponderings.
They each feature one of my papercuts, and are printed by Scout Books in Portland, Oregon.
What makes these special:
- 100% recycled Kraft cover!
- 100% recycle white interior paper!
- 100% awesome!
You can snag them in my shop or over on Wylder Goods.
How to Be an Explorer
Loved writing this piece for GOOD: Make Room for Discovery: Five Simple Steps For Explorers
Magellan, Columbus, Da Gama, Amundsen, Cook, Eriksson, Lewis & Clark, Shackleton—all names synonymous with adventure and exploration. They circumnavigated the world, discovered continents and became the subjects of history books. There was an unknown, and it was meant to be explored.
In the modern age of the Internet, cell phones, and around-the-world air travel, that sense of the unknown has changed, but it certainly hasn’t disappeared. While there may not be entire continents up for grabs, modern day exploring is just as important as it was during the Age of Exploration, if not more so.
Read the rest of this entry »
Dirtbag Gourmet: Cooking for Your Date in the Great Outdoors
It’s good when editors let you pitch the kind of articles that make you laugh. Which is why I am excited about my most recent post on the very respectable outdoor online magazine Adventure Journal, where I took a stab at the topic of food and love in the backcountry. It started as a conversation between friends on how to impress a date on a hike (“make your own trail mix!”) and resulted in this article:
If you can’t cook a decent meal in the backcountry, you’re destined for romantic failure. A way to anyone’s heart is often through his or her stomach, especially if you’re on the tail end of a grueling day outside. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Yeah, that will refuel the person you’re crushing on, but a homemade olive hummus wrap with sea salt? That might be the extra touch you need to turn adventure partner into your partner.
Do What You Love and the Rest Comes
“That cheesy expression that you hear… Do what you love and the rest comes. It’s true. It really works like that.”
Big ups to my good friend Allie for making this film and reminding me on a daily basis that doing what you love really is the way to go in life.
A Weekend of Iceshoeing… Oh Wait, Snowshoeing
Went snowshoeing a couple of weekends ago, and although it hadn’t snowed in ages and the physical activity probably should have been deemed “iceshoeing,” it was a great adventure all the same.
An excerpt from my trip dispatch over at Wend:
Packs filled with apples and granola bars (because we left in too much of a hurry to actually plan a real lunch), we set out on a section of the Pacific Crest Trail, headed for Trillium Lake. To say the snow was well packed would be an understatement. “Having fun on the ice today?” I remarked when we passed a group of cross country skiiers.
“Yeah, you’re probably having a much easier time,” replied one of them, pointing to my snowshoes.
“True, although I think it would be easier just to walk.”
But if you’ve come to snowshoe, you’re going to snowshoe dammit! No matter how much easier taking them off might be…
Read the whole thing here along with a great slideshow of pics.
